I actually have found many great examples searching through the archives of HN. What I would prefer is something that helps hackers get out from behind their computer and effectively sell to potential clients, in person. Something that helps hackers effectively communicate with others, in person. Things like this would be helpful to me...
If it's a problem with talking to people and communication then one way to start would be to read some sales/communications books.
--How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie
--How I raised myself from failure to success in selling by Frank Bettger
The more you talk to people the easier it gets. There's no magic pill. There are plenty of strategies and advice but the main thing is just to practice, and get out there and talk to people. It's a numbers game. It doesn't matter if you mess up or freeze up once or twice, in the long run it won't be that big a deal. I hope this helps.
Who says I haven't? All I'm saying is I wish he'd charge more. He would get more money overall from the people who would not have thought to do such a thing :)
Totally agree, I still remember the pain I had almost a decade ago install something as simple as a Borland C++ IDE. What a nightmare that was for a newb like me, zero resources online to dig through. Today, you want setup and IDE or get iPad development going? There are TON's of resources with thousands of examples. Hitting an error when setting it up? Copy, paste that error into Google. 9.9 times out of 10 you get someone who hit that error before and has already solved it.
I'm just not buying into this "oh, life is so hard to set stuff up nowadays" routine...
I don't think the point of the article is to say "oh, life is so hard to set stuff up nowadays".
Rather, the point is that it is easier and more pragmatic to rush ahead with an imperfect technology stack and achieve great things than it is to spend the time and effort to reach "a better place".
I love how far technology has come, I love writing iOS software and appreciate the resources at my fingertips via Google. However I have a similar range of experience as the article's author, and I completely agree that while great things are being done with technology as it is today, it's very sad that we have limited ourselves to only reach where we are now rather than where we may have been.
The full stack isn't under your control on Heroku.
Oh, so you have the ability, time and motivation to rewrite your firmware, operating system, network stack, database and web server and implement it on a CPU you designed yourself?
No? Then the full stack isn't under your control either. Get over it.
That's a different path entirely
You know what? It's not a different path at all. The convenience of Heroku is no different in principle to using closed source hardware.
Look, I'm a freedom-zero[1] type of person. I run Ubuntu - not OSX - and I admin my own servers. BUT the chains of convenience of apt-get are much closer to the chains of convenience of something like Heroku than many would like to admit.
To get more control one should move to AWS. But wait, I don't control the network card on the server with AWS. Hmmm... I know! I'll get a colo. Now I can purchase and build my own machine and have control over the network card. But wait, I don't control the backup power system. Hmmm.... I know! I'll rent a building, get an internet backbone piped into it, buy some generators, and control the backup power system. But wait, I don't control the...
I guess what I'm getting at is, why is this an entirely different path? Why isn't using a service such as Heroku "the path" until you hit it's limitations and need to spend a bit more time going to the next step in the process.
One could easily make the statement of "blah isn't under your control on blah" for anything. Where does it stop?
In practice, the biggest loss-of-control problem I have with Heroku is that it dictates my choice of programming language. Of course, choosing a Linux server also dictates some choices, like making it hard to run Windows-only software. But for me at least, the Linux-apps-only restriction feels less constraining than the Heroku-approved-languages-only restriction. I tend to experiment with new languages semi-frequently, and also have a bunch of code in languages that Heroku doesn't support (mainly Lisp).
1. Am I Passionate About This Business? 2. What Am I Passionate About? 3. What Problem Am I Solving? - "remember to stay Laser Beam Focused!"
This is complete garbage...